Made some updates with 5 new cards from EMN! Old deck info is here:Spoilerchile125 wrote:The Rock (and his Minions)

As for the new changes, we maxed out Lambholt because we want to have a solid early game vs the weenie decks that are still holding on, and against midrange, we are likely to flip it if we drop it on turn 2, because they run more tap lands. Garrison is crazy powerful if not answered immediately, and if you played the old build, you know how easy it is to deal with blockers, so this card gets even better (NOTE: I don't meld it because that makes it easier to remove him 2 for 1 and decreases your available mana for other plays. Also, a tri-color deck is hard on the mana base, so colorless lands are problematic). Bellower became a logical conclusion now that I have more than 6 targets for it, and it's big on it's own. Bedlam Reveler has some interesting interactions with Gitrog and Olivia that make him more than worth it. You don't want to run multiples (believe me, I tried), so he's a singleton.

For the non-creature spells, Fall of the Titans seemed less needed since I wasn't drawing or casting as many cards during my turn as I used to, making surge much less of a reality. And the reason I stopped drawing so many cards is the new walker, Liliana, is able to get back greenwarden, so I don't need pulse. Likewise, with pulse gone, I re-evaluated my use of bones and found that I didn't need that if I was going to be adding cards like collective defiance and murder, which spiked my removal saturation. If I do make a change to the decklist, that's likely one position I might reverse, but for the past 8 or so games, I've been fine.

The deck's weakness to walker based decks has been kinda dealt with with the increase in sources of damage, but the weakness to enchantment based decks it as strong as ever. Luckily those decks tend to be way too slow to deal with the onslaught The Rock has waiting for them. Mill has also become much less of a headache, with the color spread making it that much harder to hit a double mill. As always, creature based decks shrivel before the plethora of removal spells, even without languish, this deck does really well (a meta call that seems to be working out quite well for me).

If you've got the cards, sleeve em up (or "shiny them", lol); I guarantee you'll have a blast!

So, cause of this game's interesting rules and limitations, I had to use 3 different "The Rock": Olivia, Kalitas, and Gitrog. The deck basically follows the traditional "Rock" strategy of inevitability, so, taking into consideration the lack of Ultimate Price and Ruinous Path, I go all out in terms of removing every early game threat I see. All the while, I drop threats that I know will become a hassle for my opponent to deal with in later turns. The coolest, funnest thing about the deck is the way the soft combos meld together so seamlessly, like the Vampires of Olivia making good tributes for Kalitas (usually I'll sack something that's already slated for removal, or sack a past-it's-prime Gitrog), the lands discarded for Olivia giving me draws with Gitrog, Chandra dumping a bunch of extraneous removal, and even excess lands, to draw a **** with Gitrog, or even fuel more Olivia discards, Olivia with Lambholt, allowing it to swing for 4 on the ground and 3 in the air...

Best match-up: Anything with creatures, best against midrange, but can destroy aggro unless they are token-based (i.e. Gideon, Nissa), which isn't really hard, unless you don't draw any direct damage or sweepers.Worst match-up: Esper control, because few creatures, and Ux Mill, because no creatures

Just like in Modern, this deck seems overly fair and is a great deck for both beginners and experienced players, imho, because of the deck's linear gameplay and synergistic interactions.

Arlinn Kord is a weird card for me because it doesn't give me card advantage unless I open with her 0 ability. Also, that's my old build you quoted, that is pretty bad for the current meta, since it doesn't have enough threats to beat control and too "fair" to deal with aggressive token strategies. Current build: viewtopic.php?p=477418#p477418

The thing is Arlinn Kord is pretty good here because of the way this build can remove early threats and put up early bodies. Once she is down, her +1 ability gives your new beaters haste, people often overlook her +1. You are playing hasted 7/7 tramplers and 2 mana haste 5/5s from here. Ulrich comes in as a 10/10 haste . This is a big thing vs control. Better than card advantage there are plenty other cards in the list providing that

Oh! I didn't notice you had 25 lands. Yeah you need to cut Gitrog, then, cause I have it to combo with olivia, chandra, and bedlam. Without those and with less than 26 lands, the card isn't worth the headache of losing your precious manabase

As you can see the only card I have in here from after SOI is my single Aether Hub that I pulled from a pack I won from completing KLD story mode.I don't know 100% how important it was to have that one Aether Hub, but I was certainly almost always happy to see it since it comes into play untapped and is able to provide color fixing one time in a pinch. And with all the other duals I have in the deck, once is generally enough.

I don't know what in particular about this deck made me able to take it all the way to the top. Building it was trial and error. I started with something that looked cool and as I played games I sifted through all the different answers I had available to me specifically to counter problem cards I encountered that I had a hard time dealing with. I feel like (at least up through SOI) they've done a pretty good job at not printing answers that feel strictly superior to everything else, so I had to figure out what spread of what cards I wanted to deal with whatever my opponent was doing.

I must admit though, the deck doesn't do so well against opposing decks that aren't creature based. But for the last 10 levels or so it didn't feel like I really saw many decks that eschewed creatures so entirely as to blank most of my removal sweet. The deck feels like a dog to mill decks in particular, but I haven't found that those are enough of a part of the metagame that it prevents me from going up the ladder.

I also didn't use this deck exclusively to climb the ladder, but it did the vast majority of the heavy lifting for the last 15-20 levels.I don't know what I used earlier, because frankly I haven't ever purposefully ground to hit level 40 until recently when I realized I was closing in on it and I could theoretically potentially possibly hit it before the season rotated. Whatever my season score before this past week it came from an amalgamation of whatever decks I felt like playing or needed to play to get the quest objectives. Also this past week I got the 500 versus victories and 500 solo victories achievements so I really wanted to try for level 40.

And a big happy 31st birthday to Battlecry1986 who's quality posts like the one above will forever earn him the right as one of the Lost and Fallen from NGA. Gone but never forgotten in our hearts. Happy birthday BattleCry1986 wherever you are.

Difference between this reanimator build, and other grixis, abzan, or whatever are more common builds, is in the fact that instead relying on very costly cards to reanimate, I kept midrange-ish theme, so you do not need to aggressively mill self, and try to put creatures in graveyard. Many creatures are cast able since turn 5-6, and full complete of black removals and sweepers, can help you to avoid lot of damage from agressive decks. Grapple with the past helps you fix mana, as Pulse do too. Both also help spell mastery activation for Necromantic summons. Lilliana and Ever after are there for continuous reanimation. Once you can reanimate, I usually target Combustible Gearhulk+ another creature because possibility of big burn and/or card replenishing. Either way opponent choose to resolve you gain benefit, because there is solid chance that you will mill some creature so you have new targets for reanimation. There is reasonable amount of lifegain too, kalitas and pulses can gain you bunch of life.

I was surprised how this deck performed against control decks, in a positive way. Against control, you can wait till you have mana to cast your creatures, and than force opponent to spend counter spell each turn, so you do not need to mill yourself before. Once when opponent is out of counter spells, you can start reanimate creatures. Necromantic Summons and Glorybringer really take care of planeswalkers, and open path for ground units to attack. Greenwarden of Murasa is pretty good for reanimation and can enter loop replenishing hand with reanimation spells or fetching Pulses to recast. Against control it is obvious that your removals can be cycled with Cathartic reunions, so it make choices easier what to discard. Lilliana is good for avoiding counter spells, and still putting creatures on board.

Obvious disadvantage is mill deck, but if we could sideboard, there is green for enchantment hate. But had solid win ratio with this deck, against mill, so did not wanted to break synergy with reclamation sages or something like that. Usually even if opponent have Sphynx tutelage on Turn 3, big threats you can play in following turns, require opponent to spend his turns on removing threats instead milling, and then your threats start coming back, and you need only 2 swings to kill opponent, so when opponent figure that is his best chance to mill you before you kill him it is usually too late. Another problem is exile from graveyard effects, but had only one game where opponent exiled my two gearhulks same turn I put them in graveyard with Scarab Feast(opponent was playing 100 card deck so it was even more annoying). Usually you can avoid exiling from graveyard with Pulses, and Graples.

Ramp can be difficult to play against, but with cheap removals you can kill opponent's mana producing creatures, and slow him down. And if some of opponent's creature ends in graveyard, necromantic summons can get them on your side.

This deck is pretty fan to play, like solving puzzle each turn, and it have pretty good win ratio. I did not count win/loss ratio but it feels like almost never lose with this deck. Just in beginning, where I prolonged game I could win several turns before, to try to find another weaknesses, and problems, I lost several games, and I remember losing games when I could not get any creatures in top 30 cards. But that does not happen often, and I would say it has over 75% win ratio(steam top rank).

EDIT: I would also add, that unlike in grixis reanimator builds, you can use graples and Pulse to get creatures back in hand and cast it for it cost, so you do not depend strictly on reanimation.

And a big happy 31st birthday to Battlecry1986 who's quality posts like the one above will forever earn him the right as one of the Lost and Fallen from NGA. Gone but never forgotten in our hearts. Happy birthday BattleCry1986 wherever you are.

And another big happy birthday to Battlecry1986, who with only two posts ever , has left a lasting mark on NGA and is sorely missed. I regret never even having talked to him about the board game which ch sadly I have never played.

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